tight
/taɪt/ adjective, adverb, verb
Forms tighter tightest tights tighting tighted
- adjective Firmly held together; compact; not loose or open. “a tight sponge; a tight knot”
- adjective Unyielding or firm. “tight control on a situation”
- adjective Under high tension; taut. “Make sure to pull the rope tight.”
- adjective (colloquial) Scarce, hard to come by. “I grew up in a poor neighborhood; money was very tight, but we made do.”
- adjective (informal, figurative, of persons or relationships) Intimate, close, close-knit, intimately friendly. “We've grown tighter over the years.”
- adjective (slang, figurative, usually derogatory) Miserly or frugal. “He's a bit tight with his money.”
- adjective (slang) Short of money.
- adjective (of a space, design or arrangement) Narrow, such that it is difficult for something or someone to pass through it. “The passageway was so tight we could barely get through.”
- adverb Firmly, so as not to come loose easily. “Hold on tight to the rope.”
- adverb Soundly. “Good night, sleep tight.”
- verb (obsolete) To make tight; tighten.
- verb (obsolete, of a vessel) To make water-tight.
Synonyms
taut close close-knit intimate thick as thieves niggardly figure-hugging blotto ace ruly crafty serried dense tense under tension parsimonious snug tight-fitting precise plastered compressed mean mingy miserly besotted blind drunk crocked cockeyed fuddled loaded
Antonyms
baggy loose sagging saggy slack relaxed generous prodigal scattergood broad capacious open leaky
Etymology
From Middle English tight, tyght, tyȝt, tiht, variants of thight, thiht, from Old English *þiht, *þīht (attested in meteþiht), from Proto-West Germanic *þį̄ht(ī), from Proto-Germanic *þinhtaz, from Proto-Indo-European *tenkt- (“dense, thick, tight”), from Proto-Indo-European *ten- (“to stretch, pull”).
Cognate with Scots ticht, West Frisian ticht, Danish tæt, Icelandic þéttur (“dense”), Norwegian tett, Swedish tät, Dutch dicht (“dense”), German dicht (“dense”).
The current form with t- /t/ rather than etymologically-expected th- /θ/ arose in Middle English under the influence of the etymologically-unrelated verbs tighten and tight, which come from a different Proto-Indo-European root (starting with *d- and thus regularly having t-).
From Middle English tighten, thyhten (“to make tight”); see tighten.
Webster’s 1913
- p. p. of Tie. Spenser.
- adjective Firmly held together; compact; not loose or open; as, tight cloth; a tight knot.
- adjective Close, so as not to admit the passage of a liquid or other fluid; not leaky; as, a tight ship; a tight cask; a tight room; --often used in this sense as the second member of a compound; as, water-tight; air-tight.
- verb To tighten. [Obs.]
Etymology [OE. tight, thiht; probably of Scand. origin; cf. Icel. , Dan. tæt, Sw. tät: akin to D. & G. dicht thick, tight, and perhaps to E. thee to thrive, or to thick. Cf. Taut.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tight”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details